5/03/2013

Friday Reacharound: Four Rude Heroes Who Will Make Your Weekend Worth Living:
1. After building Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 2003, the district had high hopes for the place, with its music and art labs. But instead, the rooms were never used, the school descended into the chaos of "violence and disorder," and it turned into one of the worst performing schools in the state. In steps Andrew Bott, the sixth principal in seven years, and he makes one major change: he fires the security guards and invests in the arts programs the school was supposed to have.

Of course, the school is in the midst of a huge recovery, behavior problems have almost disappeared, and the students are engaged and interested in being there. There's even an after school program to keep the kids involved. Fucking amazing, isn't it? That what kids really crave is a chance to express themselves? And that if you don't allow them to do that in an organized, supervised, mentored way, they will express themselves in ways that are harmful? It seems like basic child psychology: nurture, not punish.

2. On Tuesday, April 30, at a town hall meeting in Auburn, Alabama, with the district's U.S. Representative, Mike Rogers, the typical bullshit happened. Some fuckin' yahoo got up and said, "Almost weekly or monthly we hear things...being done by this administration that [appear] to be clearly illegal."

Local resident John Mullins wasn't going to hear it. Sick to death of yammering ignoramuses bogarting the microphone, Mullins stepped up and said to the fuckin' yahoo, "You’re a crazy man. You are crazy. The president is not some person trying to take your rights away." This, in a district where Republican Rogers has been elected three out of five times with 60% of the vote.

Mullins, who owns one of the oldest comic book stores in the Southeast, wasn't done. He turned from the fuckin' yahoo and to his representative. He blamed the sequester for a 20% drop in his sales (the 3rd District is pretty reliant on military spending). And he added, "The House of Representatives has done more to hurt my business than anything government, state, local or federal, has ever done." And then he dropped the mic.

By the way, Rogers has had two close races, so perhaps he might need to pay attention to more people than the fuckin' yahoos.

3. An unnamed female U.S. Navy sailor was on shore leave in Dubai. She had been shopping at the Mall of the Emirates and couldn't get a cab back to Khalid Port to get on her ship. So she got on a bus. The driver took her through side roads and stopped in a parking lot. The driver then attempted to rape the sailor, pulling a knife on her.

The emphasis should be on the word "attempted." Because the sailor then proceeded to show the punk-ass bus driver that U.S. military training teaches a girl how to take out dickheads with your bare hands. She broke the knife, beat the shit out of him, and strangled him into submission with her leg. The Rude Pundit would like to think she farted in his face and made him fellate the knife handle, telling him to let bus drivers all over know that she might be riding their bus the next time one of them tries to assault a woman, so they better watch their raping asses.

The bus driver was arrested the next day and said he didn't remember what had happened since he was drunk, although, you know, the bruises probably told a different story.

4. Yeah, yeah, it's a crime to rob a bank. Yeah, yeah, one shouldn't threaten innocent people with fake Mexican drug gang violence. But you know what? Sometimes you gotta admire the bad guys for not being so bad. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Australian Corey Donaldson walked into the US Bank and said that the gangs were gonna blow the place up if they didn't give him money. He got $140,000. He left and then he gave most of it away, including $8000 to a friend who was broke. Said Donaldson at his trial where he was acting as his own attorney, "I came up with the idea that since the banks had been bailed out, and the people had not, I was going to confiscate money from US Bank in Jackson and redistribute it to the poor and homeless in America. And that's what I did."

Of course, Donaldson was found guilty yesterday of bank robbery. After all, he robbed a bank. And, you know, he wasn't exactly living in poverty, staying at a hotel suite with $30,000 in cash on him when he was caught.

But Donaldson is on this list because he made explicit something: What was the difference between saying that he better get the money or he'll blow up the bank and the banks saying they better get the money from the government or they'll blow up the economy? Why is he the only one in jail?